A man like Neil Marshall makes Doomsday because he thought a futuristic soldier facing down a knight would be cool. A man like Neil Marshall makes two critically acclaimed horror movies and then obliterates expectations with his third.

A man like Neil Marshall is one the last great champions of genre cinema.

Though he’s in a league with Edgar Wright and Robert Rodriguez — the modern day John Carpenters of our world — he fell down with Doomsday, such that his next film, Centurion, went seemingly unnoticed, leaving his future in uncertain terms. It’s hard to believe, really, because the philosophy behind Doomsday was so genuine, though some might say naive. He wanted to make a movie so absurd you’d be compelled to laugh, but also find yourself enjoying some of the best R-rated sci-fi action in years — nobody makes movies quite like this anymore.

Dog Soldiers

I don’t think this is technically his feature debut, but it’s a strong start for a career nonetheless. Making use of minimalist settings and a creepy atmosphere, Marshall managed to make one of the few cool werewolf movies in existence. And certainly the last, though I’m sure a few movies made in direct answer to Twilight will challenge Dog Soldiers.

As one critic put it so well, this is like Alien, Predator, and Jaws all rolled up into one — but with werewolves. It feels derivative, but in that good way. It’s familiarity done with enough style and care that it feels fresh. There’s some gore, some ooh-rah soldier stuff, way too much foreshadowing, and a lame twist at the end. A formula for success, often necessary with such formulaic subject matter.

Right, there’s a lot of dog and wolf jokes/puns at the start of the movie. It feels like a beginner’s screenplay in that regard, but it isn’t quite enough to push it over the edge, into absurdity. Leave that for the one after next…

The Descent

I don’t care for this movie. It’s drawn out and the monsters are not scary or that well-designed. Visually, that is. In other regards, there’s implied history to them, and it’s pretty creepy, but I actually prefer the nonsense lizards from The Cave, or whatever the fuck. The Descent was white-knuckling in its first half, with these women being claustrophobic in caves, and getting stuck and running high tension. I can’t imagine a better place to set a horror movie. Cave-diving is not escapism, James Cameron.

The flaws of this movie, like the aloof narrative and out-of-the-blue moments could at the time be excused, or even appreciated, as horror movie unpredictableness, but the next movie would paint them in a new light.

Doomsday

When Doomsday was announced and the trailer was released, people whined. They said, “It’s 28 Days Later meets Mad Max meets Escape from New York.” Now, I don’t know what fucking planet these people live on, because no way does the combination of Mad Max and Escape from New York equal anything but Yeah. Was it just the derivative nature of the project that got people so frazzled? Perhaps it was an insult to their intelligence, because they perceived the movie to think it was being original, on the grounds that, well, most movies tend to do that. But of course the rip-offs were so glaring that it seemed to taunt the audience.

Doomsday, rather, the reaction to Doomsday, is proof that we live in a cynical movie-watching world. As soon as one watches the film, they’ll realize that the director was not only paying homage to these earlier movies, but having a complete blast with them. It’s the same principle, but on a much different level, as what Peter Jackson did with King Kong. Marshall wanted to introduce this genre to a wider audience, though he may not realize just how inventive the film actually is.

Yes, it uses the structure of Escape from New York as a base, but that’s fine because just like how Waterworld is a perfect Mad Max 3, this is a great sequel to Escape from L.A., following in the same conventions that that film set up — that being, this premise of crazy people clustered together is going to breed some batshit insane obstacles for the hero to meet. This post-apocalypse movie isn’t just about zombies or cannibals or viruses — Rhona Mitra’s character Maj. Eden Sinclair (awesome name) is going to fight medieval knights in an arena and get into car chases with barbarians who tape their beheaded girlfriends to one piece so they can drive together.

Doomsday in this regard recalls Total Recall, another gory 80s movie that didn’t come out in the 1980s. And much like Total Recall, Doomsday in its day was not well understood. There’s a joy in novelty and invention in Doomsday, and a lot of these scenarios and things are born out of sources we’ve all enjoyed, but kicked up to a new extreme. It’s not only one of the best sci-fi movies of the decade, but one of the goriest and most fun action movies too. This rabbit will be blown up by sentry turrets for — well, for absolutely no reason.

Marshall also introduces two things here that carry over into his next picture: a strong female character, and an impressive ability to have the audience invest in characters they know nothing about. For the latter, we have these two soldiers who survive by Sinclair’s side longer than they have any right to. I assumed they’d die at every encounter, because truly this is her show, and these guys have no characterization. What they do have, and this was seen in Dog Soldiers, is solid chemistry. Despite the carnage and the macabre setting, these two have a laugh as they take out cannibals with axes, and by goofing around — and even just surviving up to a late point — I didn’t want to see them die. For an action movie, this is a preferable, on-the-fly alternative to actual characterization. Good on you, Neil.

Then of course we have the tough girl, played by the woman who looks like a tough girl despite the beauty — Rhona Mitra. While she may not be as compelling to watch as the next female character to be discussed, Maj. Eden Sinclair is one cool chick, with a fake eye and a knack for killing gladiators. She’s a badass, but she’s a believable badass. Not only does Rhona Mitra look like an athletically capable woman (rather than Milly from Hard Revenge Milly, to use a recent example, who looks like a pretty normal person you’d see walking around), she isn’t the action hero god that trounces everyone. She gets beat up and tossed around, and this puts her on an equal playing field with the villains.

Last post I lamented the fact that Milly wasn’t the action hero god. That’s because I want a movie like hers to be a slasher flick, but with Doomsday, it’s more appropriate that Sinclair is a realistic badass. It heightens her moments of victory, and adds tension to hand-to-hand fight scenes with spears in swords… in the future.

Doomsday will keep you guessing, and Neil Marshall leaves you in good hands with Eden Sinclair, who’s got the tacit nature of her most obvious inspiration — Snake Plissken — with an all-soldier, no fucking around attitude that’s pretty rare, even for dude action heroes. It’s confidence without the one-liners, and the badassery to back it up.

Neil Marshall is also ballsy enough to take an unbelievably beautiful South African stunt woman and paint her face beyond recognition, and then behead her… and then reattach the head in vain. I am so ashamed that I skipped this movie when it came out in theatres. It’s right up there with Slither and so many others…

Centurion

Doomsday was a sci-fi movie that wanted to be a sword-and-sandals movie, so let’s just make a sword-and-sandals movie. While this one lacks the wacky nature and imagination of its predecessor, it has the same level of bloodshed and action. If you’re in town for a straightforward, bruising actioner, Marshall is your man. Centurion stars Michael Fassbender and Jimmy McNulty himself as soldiers of the Ninth Legion, which went missing during the expansion into Pict territory. This is that story, though historical accuracy is not something we come to a movie like this for.

We come because we know it’s going to be a ride, one with plenty of blood and running around in beautiful Scotland scenery. There’s also a lovely Olga Kurylenko all done up to look like a barbarian, whose Etain is savage as hell but still manages to look sexy. Indeed she is the greatest draw, and plays a great part in the film. Centurion, despite the violence and overall intensity (“I AM A SOLDIER OF ROME! I WILL NOT YAAYLD!”), borders on generic, and requires that iconic image of deadly Etain with her facepaint to stand out.

There was a moment in Centurion where I felt the story could’ve capitalized on the L.L. Cool J mentality from Deep Blue Sea, that of having two stories interwoven, where one is basically irrelevant and all the better for it, but the two soldier who get separated don’t have much screentime as such, and leads to an anti-climax within the narrative. I really thought that dude was gonna kill those wolves and make it back, which would’ve made no sense and been more Marshallian.

There’s kid killing and CG blood explosions — that which we adore from Doomsday, but none of the same elements that make you say ‘wow’ and sit up, save for a particularly nasty eye-trauma. Good, but not great. Memorable certainly for Etain, a performance that’s subtely animal, though we get the feeling that a great deal is blasting through that bloodthirsty brain of hers, maybe even some humanity.

Conclusion

Neil Marshall is a complicated thing. We’re not used to filmmakers who make movies because that’s their interest, and they want to make movies. Odd as it is to say. He’s not interested in the business or in making money, but having fun, which produces some of the most unpredictable and lively entertainment in movies today. Whatever his next movie will be, I can’t guess at subject matter, certainly, I can only hope that it arrives soon.

Bloody Battle is 10% more futuristic than its predecessor, as measured in the new style fancied in the gangsters of the day — gas masks. The two movies take place in a familiar post-apocalypse, one where it’s likely that down under Master Blaster upholds his power in Barter Town, though Japan has a more cyberpunk feel (if Versus can be said to have a horror movie feel, for example). The war-torn buildings and desolate interiors offer an appropriately impressionistic environment for our formidable heroine Milly, though they also offer the audience’s best guess that Hard Revenge Milly: Bloody Battle is after all, a budgeted affair.

Though a larger world is implied, much of the story unfolds in parking garages and non-descript warehouses, with the occasionally dressed-up set peppered in for world-building’s sake. Fortunately, by the endgame this actually registers as insignificant, because the action these environments house is a specific flavor of stylized ultraviolence, one with flying kung-fu, cool poses, and wacky weapons that inflict impressive spectacle when unleashed on smug, gas-mask-clad do-wrongers.

The action in the film is one end of the Hard Revenge Milly equation that’s so frustrating. The premise of this sequel doesn’t stray far from the original’s plot, certainly not for the purposes of puzzling out what’s so problematic in an otherwise highly entertaining gore-fest. Milly, after massacring the gang that brutally murdered her husband and set her baby on fire, while at the same time tearing her body apart with knives and forcing her to watch, finds herself hunted by friends of the gang — as we learn from the hardly comparable Chan Wook Park’s Vengeance Trilogy, revenge is a cyclical, spiralling affair.

At the same time, Milly is approached by a young woman whose lover was killed, and seeks training for vengeance of her own. It may not sound like much, but keep in mind that the original movie was 45 minutes long, and this one still isn’t quite average feature length, clocking in at 74 minutes.

So what’s the trouble with Hard Revenge Milly?

The opening fight scene embodies a rare and beautiful ideology in action movie filmmaking, where the action hero is depicted as a slasher villain in how he/she dispatches foes. The only contemporary example that springs to mind is the critically discarded Punisher: War Zone, a film that sees Frank Castle slaughtering villains as if they were zombies — heads explode, bodies explode; the carnage is front and center, and there’s a gleeful joy in the application of a crazed badass to the action.

When this badass is essentially the Terminator, the entertainment is in the creativity of the hero killing slimy villains rather than the drama of ‘will the hero prevail?’ since there would clearly never be a question (there never is a question, regardless of what action movie you’re watching, but let’s not parade on the dreams of the Len Wisemans and the McGs of the world*). Punisher: War Zone succeeds where the 2004 Punisher fails (for one) in the villain department, because there’s a nemesis cold war going on — Frank Castle might be crazy, but Jigsaw and Looney Bin Jim are batshit. John Travolta? Not very threatening and surely no threat to Thomas Jane, which deflates the drama of ‘will the hero prevail?’

War Zone goes above and beyond, then, where Castle has gangsters to kill like a regular Jason, but with more RPGs, and these guys are no threat, but also a villainous element that provides any measure of suspense. Hard Revenge Milly: Bloody Battle, as well as its predecessor, have the same pretty Japanese pop-singer dude who happens to be a badass.

It’s odd, because while the end fight of the original is much longer than any other fight scene in the movie, it’s less entertaining because the guy offers a sizable opposition, and this is not what we were being driven toward with Milly tearing through people earlier. What makes this guy special? His kung-fu seems to be pretty good but he looks like everyone else and isn’t characterized appropriately in this regard. The sequel does a little better by having the villain be a cyborg, but any cyber-fuelled cool factor is negated by his villainy stemming purely from his sexual deviance — aka homosexuality. That’s great, guys.

This may sound like a lot of talk for something pretty unimportant, but the in-the-moment result is that Milly gets thrown around a lot by these lame villains where she should be trouncing everyone, save for something actually impressive. Anything other than yet another gangster dude. Like the Bride, Lady Snowblood, or Lady Vengeance, Milly gets her gender-equality fair share of the action movie beating, but to me it doesn’t make a lot of sense given the premise of what these movies are. This might sound like sexism, and it probably is, but this time, I honestly just don’t give a fuck. I don’t want to see a woman nicknamed Hard Revenge Milly getting her arm chopped off and defeated, only to win with further cyborg upgrades further down the road.

Not to mention that Milly technically falls into that more recently popular category of kick-ass females, here dubbed the Dragon Tattoo category, where only rape or violence against the heroine can incite bloody rebirth. That’s not a big deal here, because not only is Milly’s origin story so absurd, the movies are extremely obviously not meant to be taken very seriously.

I mean, look — when Milly cuts some dude’s body with her elbow sword, their high blood pressure sprays in an initially hesitant fountain in the grand tradition of Chinese and I think Japanese cinema. It’s great, silly fun, but it is metered a bit by Milly’s qualified badassery. That said, Bloody Battle is an improvement over an already entertaining original, one that reaches for eleven on the novelty dial in the fight scenes: we never know what her metal body’s gonna drum up next to slice and dice her foe, or what lethal new form this familiar weapon will take, but we know it’s gonna be bloody as hell. Meanwhile the action is intense and fantastical, remaining compelling through the whole of the two films with the promise that they’ll end in brutal, comedic splatter.

This movie is also interesting for its essence as a sequel. This is an instance where the follow-up deconstructs the original, showing the aftermath of the events in the first movie and the effects they have on the heroine. She isn’t just a killing machine, she’s a killing machine with no sense of control and a lost past that she can’t even be sure of. In a peculiar moment, Milly questions her memories in a spot of dialogue lifted straight from Ghost in the Shell. The self-deprecating doctor character plays Batou here, swatting down her Shirowesque cyber-Descartes existential quandaries much in the way the audience might.

Philosophical questions about revenge are paid equal lip service, but it amounts more to an intriguing setup to a theoretical third installment than an actually compelling discussion. Milly might be cursed by her vengeful journey, which infects others and only begets violence and death, but we’d rather see her kick some ass than mope around like the Major.

Or get her ass kicked by the villains, for God’s sake. Somebody needs to give this director, Takanori Tsujimoto, a bigger budget and put the lead, Miki Mizuno, in more action movies — they make a great team.

*Because I like Len Wiseman for some reason and I really enjoyed Terminator Salvation for some reason

It’s the inexplicable and unexplained post-apocalypse, where we’re told that Japan is nothing but a wind-swept plain. Elsewhere, in the two abandoned buildings of this plain, Milly seeks hard revenge for the murder of her family and the fleshy parts of her body.

Hard Revenge Milly is a smart action movie. Not only does it grab the attention immediately with some sword-thanked arterial spray, it deals directly with the genre’s #1 problem — action movies can be unbelievably, shockingly boring. It does this by its runtime, which is roughly 43 minutes (it lasts the whole way, through the credits and after), effectively minimizing the exposition and everything between the fights that is empty content. There is almost no actor who can carry a movie without playing a character, which is why Arnold Schwarzenegger movies (barring End of Days) will always be great, and that’s often what happens in action movies across the globe. The effort given toward an original, compelling story is akin to the writer sullenly kicking an empty soda can across a dusty road.

Whether it’s reliant on special effects or physical combat, action can be pretty expensive, and cannot realistically fill 100% of the movie. Usually, unless it’s a John Woo flick, the action will be peppered in. To be fair, a lot of Hard Revenge Milly is talking and her waiting around for the action. Fortunately the action feels like live-action anime, which may sound pretty crass or cliche, but the end result is that while the choreography may not be as complex or impressive as we’ve seen elsewhere, there’s a fantastical logic to the martial arts that makes it difficult to keep up with, but what we do know is that those violent flashes sure look cool.

As we learn from Versus, there’s a tendency with these overly violent, stylized action movies coming out of Japan (perhaps taking inspiration from Versus) to favor how things look over the movement, such that still frames taken from any point in a fight scene will be well composed and super cool looking. This is where the anime comparison comes in — as early Japanese animation featured a lot of drawn still frames being physically manipulated for the camera, a style that’s been updated over the years to largely the same effect, where there’s detailed characters jumping through the air but moving somewhat stiffly when compared to the detail-lite but smoothly animated Disney cartoons.

With Hard Revenge Milly, there’s probably twenty total minutes of violence, but it’s pretty fun to watch for just such animated reasons. In one instance she does this kick thing and kind of flies off the guy, only to follow up with another attack in the next shot, sans any sense of momentum… or reality. She’s also got a sword — which extends from a pretty odd spot on her arm — that magically grows when convenient, like John Cho’s in Trek ’09. That’s the true joy in a movie like this, though the inventiveness of dismemberment tactics and the absurdity of the violence. Martial arts killers in Japan have an extra talent to turn people into geysers, which never gets old. Thankfully, because this movie isn’t really a movie but a short film, it doesn’t get old, which makes me wonder about the sequel, Bloody Battle.

Futuristic cell phones

There’ll be a review shortly for that one because there’s more I wanted to say about villains and feminism and stuff.

I gotta tell you this came as a complete surprise. I knew he was making a movie called Cosmopolis, and that it was an adaptation of a book, but I had no idea it was science-fiction, and no idea it was happening so soon.

Didn’t A Dangerous Method just happen?

I sure hope this opens wide, which sounds silly because Robert Pattinson is a big name, but so too I thought of Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender, but the last Dronenberg was nowhere — for me — to be found.

I get real excited when shit like this happens:
The last time Ridley Scott made a sci-fi movie, it was Blade Runner. Prometheus comes out this year.
The last time Dronenberg made a sci-fi, it was eXistenZ.

And yet, the last time Jesus Christ made an SF, it was Terminator 2, and twenty years after that came Avatar so… I have to be careful.

Apparently it’s hip, I suppose edgy, to claim that The Godfather Part II is better than the original, and I feel like the same can be said of Menace II Society and its closest analog, Boyz N the Hood. John Singleton’s debut is hailed as an American classic, praised for its direction, acting, writing, and emotional depth. It was one of the first times such subject matter crossed Hollywood screens, and it sparked years of troubled black poor gangster movies, many taking place in South Central, LA, including at least two more Singleton pictures. The Hughes Brothers’ debut, Menace II Society, seems to be one of these movies, observing the life and dangers of these troubled youth in a world of drugs, guns, and violence. I’m sure I first heard of this movie through Boyz N the Hood, and some people feel that it’s more successful in achieving what Boyz did.

I will say Menace II Society is a good movie. It’s heartfelt and intense, gritty in its portrayal of life and completely unforgiving. Characters are not black-and-white, and there’s the presence of death at every angle. There are also a few familiar faces here, including Samuel L. Jackson, Bill Duke, and Charles Dutton, who I thought was the best part of the movie. However, there are a few few huge problems I had while watching it, even though in the end I did think it was solid. Right off the bat there’s voiceover, and the subject matter made me think of City of God — you know, the whole Goodfellas deal. City of God was more successful, as voiceover is a very, very delicate thing, and it was also more successful at structure.

Both movies have disjointed and ugly plot structures. They’re coming of age stories, but so is Boyz N the Hood, which is paced and scripted incredibly well. Menace II seems to jump around from moment to moment, never focusing on any of the many secondary characters, not even O-Dog, long enough to get a good feel for them, or get invested in. The story is that there is no story, it’s just a slice of life, which is fine, but in this case had massive bearing on where the characters ended up at the credits, and what I felt about it.

The thing is that it’s more of an unfocused narrative — the writer attempted to fit an entire world into 97 minutes, and 97 minutes just isn’t enough. Throughout the whole thing Caine, our main acharacter, seemed aloof as he drifted on; at one point his grandfather asks him if he wants to live or die, in reference to his constant risking of life on the streets. Caine answers, “I don’t know,” and while that’s a pretty heavy moment that carries weight throughout, it also characterizes him the most. He lives fast and does what he wants, while being pulled away by Jada Pinkett’s character and his grandparents, who he lives with (his parents had died).

What’s going on here is the approach the writer and the Hughes Brothers took, to observe Caine and the rest of the cast without judging them conclusively (Caine is a good guy, but he does rob at gunpoint and hang up on a girl he got pregnant). In the opening, Caine watches in horror as O-Dog murders the innocent albeit racist Korean grocers, and can’t stand to see the surveillance footage that the killer proudly totes around. But he’s forced to accept it — this is the life, and there’s no escaping. Indeed, the two characters with an eye to move out are killed by the end, as if some higher power knew, and couldn’t let it happen.

So it’s a movie that’s heavier on theme than it is on the dramatic aspect — we see familiar but compelling things, like “Hey man you have a life to lose, you gotta get out of here” and all that, but because the characters are designed this way, it doesn’t hit as hard as the before mentioned Boyz N the Hood, which balanced theme with emotion to a great end. Tre might just be in every scene; it’s very nearly a third person limited narrative, and yet we have a good idea of who Doughboy, Ricky, and Furious are, so that when their characters are measured in the film’s most heated moments toward the end, it’s overwhelming but organic and logical. Nothing comes as a surprise that shouldn’t, and we care about everything that happens every step of the way.

In the end, it’s a matter of expectations. Go into Menace II Society expecting a gritty look at life on the streets with touches of poigniancy every now and again. Don’t expect, like I did, another Boyz N the Hood, though the two share many elements. And if you can get over the voiceover, which as we discover is more in line with Sunset Boulevard‘s, there’s not much else to complain about, other than the spotty and sometimes over-the-top acting. Charles Dutton’s scene is great though, and the violence was completely unexpected. The Hughes Brothers are really channeling Paul Verhoeven here, but when a gangster gets shot to pieces here, nobody’s laughing.

What a specific thing this is, and what a delicate feel modern action directors whiff on so frequently. Movies like Taken are on the right path, movies like The Expendables farther but still there, and movies like Machete miss it entirely. Thing is, those three movies are all pretty acclaimed, relatively speaking. The following movies are overlooked, underappreciated, or downright hated, and that’s because they’re far ahead of their time. Or… twenty to thirty years past…

Punisher: War Zone (2008)

Color, motion, composition, and endless violence. With this four year follow-up to the more popular and successful Thomas Jane Punisher, Lexi Alexander had pretty much free reign to do something we often shy away from, and the result is a balls crazy and allegedly faithful adaptation of Punisher comics. In those comics, people get their heads blown off, bodies torn apart, shot to pieces, and more — if that sounds good, pop this in the VCR and sit back. I think a problem with a lot of action movies these days is a mind-boggling commitment to realism. Movies are escapism, and we get to see in movies what we can’t see in real life or on TV shows or sometimes in our own minds because we wouldn’t think that a chair leg could be used to dispatch of somebody in such a way.

Punisher: War Zone is part slasher movie, and part zombie movie. It’s a slasher because the Punisher wrecks everyone he sees, and it’s a zombie movie — but without the zombies, which as of late have become the weakest parts of a zom… well never mind, that’s an absurd thing to say but I do believe they’re a bit played out. Six years ago. In zombie movies people get their heads blown off, bodies torn apart — you remember. The Punisher does horrible things to the human body, and he’s so eh about it. That’s why we have the straight man in Colin Salmon, a fan favorite despite rarely being in good movies, to react as we would when somebody gets their face removed.

Rounding out the cast are TV faces, in particular Dominic West of The Wire fame. Here he plays Jigsaw, and his reparte with “Looney Bin Jim,” who you won’t recognize from any of the comics, is comedy gold. In the end though, I appreciate that this movie commits to over-the-topness, and is plenty aware of what it is. A violence film, one that’s gleeful in its horrendous violence. The spectacle is spectacular, as people explode and get punched in — seriously, the Punisher could poke somebody in this movie and they’d start hemmohraging. Unfortunately for them he does much more than that.

Verdict: BUY, IMMEDIATREY

The Expendables (2010)

The build-up to The Expendables was enormous. Here’s a movie with everyone, about a team of soldiers who at some point will probably learn that they’re expendable, a classic trope whose best analog here would be Predator. I was also thinking Alien, but that’s not exactly an action movie. So I’m sitting in the theatre watching this movie and in the first five minutes a guy gets his head cut off with a sniper and I’m thinking, “Okay. I can see this.” But then the rest of the movie happens and it’s like… they just gave up. Or actually cared about their awful story. All I know is that it involves Angel Batista and waterboarding some chick, which was uncomfortable. Why would I want to see that? Was The Expendables gonna be the political thriller that’ll really bring to light all sorts of discussions on the morality of torture in our modern day? No, that’s clearly the job of 24: Season 8. There’s little action in this movie, and the action that’s there is average. Mildly entertaining, but highly disappointing.

These actors have Crank, Total Recall, Die Hard, First Blood, Terminator 2, and… Crank 2 between them, and The Expendables falls far beneath all of them. To be fair, Arnold wasn’t really in it, but he’s definitely in the sequel. Christ. I won’t go up to the box office and say “One for The Expendables 2 please… JUST KIDDING!” and then drive back home because it’s rated PG-13 (doesn’t really help though) I’ll do that because the first movie was atrocious.

Verdict: Avoid

Doomsday (2008)

The preemptive criticisms of this post-Descent Neil Marshall flick were priceless. They called it a mix of Escape from New York, 28 Days Later, and The Road Warrior. Now, I can’t speak for 28 Days Later — but look at yourself. Is that a bad thing?! I’d say more accurately the closest analog to Doomsday is Escape from LA, the much maligned sequel to Carpenter’s 1981 classic. Escape from LA to me set a precedent which was never capitalized on until Rhona Mitra hit the land beyond the wall in this movie, where it’s the same old song and dance: we quarantined a segment of population and they’re crazy. Time to check back in.

In Escape from LA you had transvestite Pam Grier, plastic surgeon zombie Bruce Campbell, Map to the Stars Eddie, surfing, evil basketball, and hanglider battles — it was completely wild and unpredictable, a 100% good time throughout, because amidst all this madness you have our favorite hero Snake Plissken, an entirely over-the-top and bad motherfucker. In Doomsday you have girl snake, a woman with an equally great name — Maj. Eden Sinclair.

I’ve talked a little bit about girls in science-fiction movies, and Eden Sinclair always places highly on ‘the list,’ (the one in my head) alongside better known femmes like Ripley and… Clone Ripley. She’s believably badass, and it isn’t like she’s just fighting useless stormtrooper types, you know the corporate soldiers in gas masks — she fights Ren fair knights and Mad Max cannibals. Add David O’Hara and one great chase scene at the end and you’ve got a recipe for Marshall’s best yet movie (though I haven’t seen Centurion). There’s actually more I want to say about Doomsday but this isn’t the time. So for now…

Verdict: Yes!

The Nelvedine/Taylor Catalogue

Crank, Crank 2: High Voltage, and Gamer are all great fun. Let’s look at each individually, because they’d all place on this list and you should infinitely see them.

Crank: The humble beginnings of one Chev Chelios, who finds out he’s a dead man in a high-concept movie. Shot on camcorders and rollerskates, this movie takes you to the action on a unique plane. There’s also very explicit violence and sex. For those It’s Always Sunny fans check out a cameo appearance by Glenn Howerton.

Crank 2: If you thought Crank was good, get ready, because Crank 2 is a phenomenon. Pretty much the insanest and funnest American action movie since Death Wish III. Eye-popping, and in at least two cases cringe-inducing. There’s just something about nipple cutting… These movies are endlessly inventive and highly motivational. Some days I’d like to just get up and run through town with a sexy accent, screaming into the air. The only fault I have with the movie is the villain. As much as I like Clifton Collins, Jr., and as great a character as he was, there was really great chemistry between Chev Chelios and the original guy — the first villain would also engage in a phone conversation with Chev and be like “We’re gonna kill you man,” and Chev would say something very casually and get the dude royally pissed off every time.

Gamer: I really enjoyed this movie. I know some have gripes with it, and maybe it isn’t as good as the others, maybe it takes itself too seriously, but I’m actually a big fan of the imagery in this movie, even as a straightup science-fiction film. The art design is great, the guns are big and cool, the battlefield is appropriately shattered, and Society is bright and eerie. It’s a movie with a surprisingly entertaining story, which is surprising given the saturation on the market across time for all these ‘evil sport on TV, look at yourself’ movies. This came out around the same time as The Condemned and Death Race, the latter of which I saw and also enjoyed quite a bit. If you’re into solid sci-fi shootemups or glorified B-movies or whatever name you want to give something like this, check it out. Explosions, Dexter, Zoe Bell, Gerard Butler with a gun, and the hectic assault on Society make it all worth it.

Verdict: Check em

Hobo with a Shotgun (2011)

Interesting story behind this one, but it’s not my place to go over it here. It’s also one that made watching the movie slightly bittersweet, but don’t let it get to you because Hobo is a very entertaining grindhouse flick. It isn’t like Planet Terror or Black Dynamite which, while they do dabble in their respective horror and action, are comedies, and good ones at that. Hobo with a Shotgun pretends to actually take itself seriously — and it makes sense. These guys set out to make a crazy 80s action movie with a lot of blood, and they succeeded. While there was less Hobo than anticipated, it’s still a fun, gory ride, with an early cameo by Ricky from Trailer Park Boys, the one who’s always losing his head.

Of course, there’s plenty more; I didn’t mention any foreign movies, but there are a few that have a lot of action and lean toward the ludicrious — half of the 80s action movie was the HK school, stuff by Woo and To, and there are modern versions of those, but F. I’m out.

There’s something to be said for superhero movies these days that aren’t Marvel or DC produced, genrebusting film, and anything made by James Gunn. So allow me — Super, Gunn’s most recent directorial feature, is easy to get into, hard to watch, and extremely difficult to parse out. Even that assessment isn’t entirely accurate; it isn’t hard to watch like Crank 2 nipple cutting or Dune, but the violence is unexpectedly brutal, and the tone vaccilates wildly. Of course, this is a James Gunn movie, so the violence is just right, as is the immorality and profanity, and everything else that makes for a fun time. It’s got the premise to go far, and yet I must be restrained in my praise — it won’t be glowing, but it will be. The movie is very, very entertaining, but it’s also highly demented, just as knocked in the head as everyone says. The problem is that it clashes with preconcieved notions about the story and where it’s going, and this extends even to the morality of the story.

We follow a down-on-his-luck loser, Frank D’Arbo, played by Rainn Wilson, as his wife is stolen by the scheezy Jacques, Kevin Bacon no less, and decides to turn to masked vigilantism for empowerment. This is one of those goof-ball origin stories, no? So all of the resulting trial and error and crime-bashing montage is par for the course — this is familiar territory. Why then is it veering off-course, settling on the road, veering, settling, and veering again so often? I’m not just referring to the surreal sequences of being touched by God or “Bombs,” or anything — there are more than a few moments of pure what the hell in this movie, both good and bad, depending on your disposition.

If you liked Slither, you’ll probably like this movie. A better comparison though would be Kick-Ass, though I’ve yet to see that movie. Woody Harrelson was also recently in a movie like this — where there are triple A superhero blockbusters, there will persist the indie scene, and independent superhero movies like Super can’t exploit special effects and CGI for ticket sales, and they certainly don’t have the marquee value of brand names like X-Men and Spider-Man. So Super decides to go the old-fashioned route. Or does it? It’s hard to decide just where Gunn was going with this movie, what he was trying to say or what emotions he wanted the audience to feel at any given moment.

It isn’t enough for a filmmaker to simply make a movie that’s fun, whose sole purpose is to be fun, because that doesn’t always yield ‘fun movie,’ as a result. Though Machete could’ve benefitted from that formula, I suppose. The problem with Super is that it feels unfocused, but not in the usual way a movie like this could be, it’s more in an abstract area that’s difficult for an audience member like me to pin down — the actual development. This is a script that’s been sitting in James Gunn’s desk since 2002 (so no, guys, there’s no base for controversy with this and Kick-Ass, which was published in 2008), so it’s very possible that it’s been through a number of revisions, or drastic changes correlating to James Gunn then and James Gunn now.

I don’t know what the answer is. Here’s the chief issue: While I know truly nothing of superheroes or the comic world, I can gather that after Watchmen, stories about superheroes were either the genuine article or post-modern. Super is neither, though we assumed one of two going in. We think we understand what we’re watching during the first act, that Super is a slightly less zany and much more violent Scott Pilgrim–especially after that credits sequence–but as the movie goes on, we don’t know what’s coming next. Like, to the max. I figured that when his brain was touched by God, ‘we don’t know what’s coming next’ meant crazy moments, but in reality, it was sacred elements like story elements and tone and theme. Even Scott Pilgrim gets the (correct) girl at the end, but with Super, who knows what’s gonna happen.

I must applaud a film for being so audacious, though this can easily be confused for laziness, unfortunately, but it’s difficult for me to run out and hold Super over my head on the African cliffs like Simba because it’s not that the movie goes in unexpected places that counts, it’s the places themselves, and by the end of the film, we’re expecting a point. We get one, but it’s not satisfactory. I decided before the movie was over that it was an ending and a point satisfactory to the character, which would make Super doubly akin to Scott Pilgrim, because this is a movie that sort of happens in the dude’s head, and why can’t a resolution be fine just for the character? But — then we have a last shot that’s similar to the ending of A History of Violence and Oldboy. In fact, it’s the identical shot. It’s one of ambiguity. What’s going on?

At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. Just let yourself go and let Super wash over you. It’s a fun movie, with a few good lol out loud moments, like the wheelchair lady, D’Arbo explaining why Robin was named after a bird (because… they’re loyal), and Ellen Page expressing discontent at the villains knowing D’Arbo’s identity. While the action isn’t exactly John Woo, when it’s got Verhoeven levels of blood and gore, it doesn’t need to be. There’s a good amount of it, but the real reason to watch Super is for the characters. The writing is priceless, and I was invested in seeing just where all of these guys were going, from the main character D’Arbo right down to the henchman played by Michael Rooker, another in the cast of James Gunn familiars.

The cast is excellent, even in those I didn’t at first recognize, like James Gunn and Rob Zombie (though after seeing Dazed and Confused and not recognizing Ben Affleck or Cole Hauser I find I’m pretty oblivious when it comes to people). I could’ve stood to see more Nathan Fillion and Kevin Bacon, but the moments they had they reveled in. The standout however would most certainly have to be Ellen Page. I’d been pretty indifferent to Ellen Page up until this point, seeing her only in Inception and five minutes of Juno, but this movie’s convinced me of her brilliance. You can tell an actor’s going all out when the accent pokes through; she handles the complicated character Libby quite well, and she’s one hell of a character. She starts out pretty normal, and by the time the movie’s over she’s been through quite a range: off-the-wall enthusiastic, psychotic, rapist, and crybaby. A number of pretty bold modes.

Before I talk about the number 1 on this list, which I’m not sure I even want to talk about, I figured to take a quick stop at the Worst Things of the Year, things that you must avoid. In no particular order, because I just cannot decide… (I left one thing off this list because it happens to be one of my friend’s favorite movies, and I’d feel bad trashing on it… let’s say it’s a particular Tony Scott movie with a particular actress from a particular pirate movie…)

The Takashi Miike Catalogue

Well I still have yet to finish Sukiyaki Western Django, and when I do expect to see a review; I’m torn so far. I have however seen — let’s see… two halves, one third, and one whole of his movies. None were good. He had probably the weakest segment on Three… Extremes, and everything else — 13 Assassins, Ichi the Killer, and Shinjuku Triad Society, were all terrible.

There’s no filmmaker I’ve wanted to like more than Miike but simply could not — he turns me in the opposite direction every time. I look at his filmography and see titles and recognize a few of them, but they all seem to be about ultraviolent guys busting each others’ brains out. Oh right, extreme Asian cinema — I love that stuff. Chan Wook Park n shit? No.

Park may have had some violence against women in… every movie so far, I suppose, but never rape. I don’t know rape is really where I draw the line on cinema violence. Irreversible sucks (but for more reasons than that). Cinema violence for me is very important. It’s escapism if it’s gratuitous, and it can be artful if it serves a purpose. People getting shot in Paul Verhoeven movies, people getting bludgeoned in Park movies, people getting mutilated in The Thing, which I just talked about here. I love it all, but when I have to watch for even one minute a girl screaming and being chased around by some dude — even a villain — I freaking hate that shit.

It’s not fun, and is that not what the exploitation mentality is all about? I suppose I’ve never really watched any women-in-prison movies or anything like that, but even those are supposed to be arousing. Entertainment, by some degree. This is just stupid.

So while the violence is good, the other shit is always bad.

It sucks because Sukiyaki Western Django tells me definitively, and for many reasons, that Miike is the Asian Tarantino. Not only because Tarantino’s making a Django movie, or because he’s in this movie, but Sukiyaki is totally grindhouse post-modern. I’ll talk about that later, but in premise it’s a pretty good idea.

The Office: Season 8

Before we begin, let’s do a quick recap of the fall of this TV show…
Season 5: The last time The Office was genuinely good. Once Idris Elba leaves and the Michael Scott Paper Company arc is over (which seemed troubling at the time), stop watching the show.
Season 6: Super over-the-top, some funny moments. Kind of uncomfortable to watch.
Season 7: Very worrisome. No laughs, any episode. Embarassing to watch.

For a time The Office was one of my favorite shows. But they just kept making bad decisions, and the characters got really, really terrible. I never realized but Jim was an incredibly interesting character, because his sense of superiority that the sitcom straight man usually carries (acknowledged by Lindsay on Arrested Development), must be very well balanced. Jim was always kind of an asshole, but nowadays, when that assholicism isn’t balanced by wit or realism or sympathy, he’s just a plan dick.

Dwight is annoying. He’s no longer the naïve ass-kisser — he’s an aggressive weirdo. Pam is one-dimensional, she only talks about the baby, which is… less than exciting. Robert California adds nothing, Gabe is still here for some reason. Andy is the boss and he isn’t what he used to be, Erin is strange, and their relationship is the least compelling of the five or so that’ve been on this show.

The supporting characters have become caricatures of their past selves. They jockey for the camera and act out — shout, dance — one could never possibly mistake this office for a workplace. Old Office worked so well because the comedy was not only well written, but organic. The writers applied comedy to the workplace environment, and the writers now seem to do the opposite, force the workplace into your typical bad sitcom.

The decline has been steady. Each season has gotten worse, and though there are a few glimmers of hope, like the John Krasinski-directed episode which wasn’t totally terrible, and Craig Robinson and the new warehouse. But I’m rarely optimistic. Once a show goes south, it rarely gets back.

Honorable Mentions (For Good Stuff)

Well I totally forgot about Letters from Iwo Jima, so there you have it. Also good was Hobo with a Shotgun, which you should definitely check out. Better than Machete, maybe a little less awesome than Grindhouse.

We’re familiar with the old filmmaking trick of revealing the monster slowly, hiding it in the shadows as Ridley Scott did so famously in his 1979 sci-fi horror classic. I suppose that principle is what holds Event Horizon back so frustratingly, even though there is no ‘monster’–there isn’t much of anything. The problem with Paul WS Anderson’s horror outing pre-Resident Evil days is not within its premise necessarily, but the filmmakers’ treatment of it. There is nothing inherently wrong with the ‘hide the monster’ principle, as it worked so well in Alien, but the principle becomes an applicable principle to me when it descends into an irreversible part of film history, and filmmakers continue to carry on the tradition forever, so what we get is no monster at all until the third act. Ridley Scott would inadvertently spawn a legion of SciFi Channel Original Movies, which waste so much time with characters and plot and brief monster attacks scattered now and again, all leading up to a CG monster-filled third act, which to me says: this movie is an unforgivable but entertaining thirty minute film, stretched out into a 90 minute eye-gouge fest. Speaking of eye gouging…

It’s filmmakers who believe they understand how to work a proven formula, but are lost at the first sign of inadvertent complication, as in the case of Event Horizon, where they scramble with ideas and never really reach the sanctity of cohesion. The premise is summed up in three market buzz words: haunted house spaceship. Gothic horror in space, and remember folks, in space–no one can hear you scream (nudge nudge). From where I’m standing, which is typically outside the horror genre, haunted house movies should be about weird things going on, and the characters never really figuring out what’s happening, because it’s paranormal. Like in Paranormal Activity. It’s the classic case of characters not understanding the enemy threat, because they wouldn’t, and that makes it scary.

Unfortunately this movie exists in the hard realm of science-fiction. Trust me, this isn’t an endorsement of the stickler mindset of hard sci-fi, but for all SF stories, there is a requisite element of science. For those who don’t often traverse the speculative fiction genres, it might come as a surprise to find that science-fiction and fantasy actually mix very poorly. Star Wars is an anomaly. That’s what paranormal activity is, it operates on the principles of fantasy, and those simply don’t gel in a scifi setting, which implies more than ‘spaceship.’ Characters in this film, these scientists, can’t comprehend the hellish ongoings of the titular spaceship, the Event Horizon, so an explanation, except for a really shitty one at the end, is never given.

Though they try, and that’s the bulk of the movie’s action. Characters speculate and argue while being picked off one by one in different, usually pretty dumb, ways. What we have here is frustration born out of so obviously missed opportunities. The movie seems to struggle to figure itself out as the characters do, and we want it to get there, otherwise we’ve been investing somewhat in a pretty neat story idea for nothing. To have “Spaceship that’s gone to the end of the universe and back, who knows what it’s picked up” as a setup and reach no conclusion–or worse, the conclusion is somewhere between “this spaceship is actually a portal to hell,” and “this spaceship is alive, and hell,”–is incredibly jarring. You get to a point in watching the movie where you realize that the story’s actually done unfolding, and you’re disoriented, confused as to where you are.

What’s going on? You really missed it guys; the horror only comes out of guessing and imagining the setup’s payoff for so long; eventually the payoff has to come, and further horror exists in the payoff’s implications, or for its creation of further setups to Ten Little Indians death scenes. Because honestly, that’s what we came to see–an Alien ripoff. We have a crew in space, and they’re on a creepy spaceship. Instead of aliens, or demons, or biological military test experiments, we get something very intangible, something very close to ‘nothing.’ And Ichi the Killer, although Jason Isaacs hanging from hooks was actually kind a of neat effect.

Remember the good old days, buddy

So Event Horizon is broken as a horror movie, and long gone as a scifi movie. Does it entertain? Somewhat, but for incongruous reasons that aren’t even just ‘so bad it’s good.’ It’s another eclectic mix, which is a common thread I’ve found in the Paul WS canon. Take Resident Evil for example. Compared to its sequel, and I’d assume the rest of the sequel thrillogy, it’s practically the greatest movie ever made. But restrain yourself–it’s not. It’s a solid zombie movie with a few horror elements outside the shambling horde, like laser hallways and dogs, and one Licker, a mutant frog, if I remember correctly and icon of the games. It’s a pretty entertaining movie, but it’s not really a great film. I find that I enjoy it because of the laser hallway, the Licker, and Colin Salmon, but know that the story and art direction and everything is derivative, but not quite as slick as Doom. Good parts and bad parts, like a comedy movie that you laugh with and at, like 17 Again, if you’ve ever seen it. One or two surprisingly good jokes, but the rest is, you know, fucked.

Event Horizon has a great cast–Sam Neil, in one of his few roles, Laurence Fishburne right before The Matrix, Sean Pertwee from Dog Soldiers, and Jason Isaacs, from just about everything. There’s also the absurd stereotype black guy, who establishes himself very early on as the absurd stereotype, and never lets up–“I’m comin’ back, motherfuckers!” as the immortal line goes. Interestingly, this guy was played by Richard T. Jones, who you might remember as James Ellison, the best part of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. In this movie, he plays a much less serious, much higher-pitched voice character, who must have decided that Chris Tucker in The Fifth Element was, I don’t know, a good idea.

Thing is, I kind of liked Chris Tucker in The Fifth Element, and I kind of liked this guy, because Event Horizon is a big dumb movie, and he fits right in. In a perfect world he would not, and Event Horizon would be an effective sci-fi horror, of which there are so few, although kudos Hollywood for Pandorum just a few years ago, which bettered this film, in my opinion, and for Sunshine, which wasn’t a slasher movie, but had that kind of spirit.

Event Horizon is compromised, but it’s a hard one to write off as a complete failure because the art direction is great, and it is generally pretty creepy. The jump-scares are lame, but otherwise I don’t know why more movies don’t go with the whole ‘people with no eyes,’ thing, because it’s totally scary. In fact, I knew there were eye-related things in this movie, which is why for the longest time I never watched it. Unfortunately I was much more frightened by the idea of Event Horizon than the actual movie. I’d rather just play Dead Space, and honestly… game wasn’t that fun.

We’ve talked about the movie’s thematic structure, how Rick Deckard becomes a robot over the course of the movie, having started out not far removed, and how Roy Batty is humanized as he accelerates toward his engineered death. The only weak link in the narrative extends from this point – the tears in rain monologue was of course very telling of Roy Batty’s character as human, but it was meant to reflect on Rick Deckard as a replicant. One of the endings of Blade Runner (never filmed) was Deckard taking Rachel up north and shooting her in the back, which would have worked perfectly after the monologue scene, where our hero must embrace the robot he’s become.

Of course, what we have in the Director’s Cut, which in my opinion is the most best Cut (I hate that I even have to make the distinction) is the taste that lingers – ambiguity, as some see it. I see it as a clever bookend and a confirmation on what we’ve observed earlier, that Deckard is in some sense a replicant, and the preface to a truncated denoument.

Of course, had Blade Runner shown Deckard shooting Rachel, which we may or may not infer happens after the credits, it may have suffered Boyz N the Hood syndrome: we didn’t have to be shown (or told, rather blandly) that Doughboy dies young, it’s been implied internally in the narrative. Not only that, but it seems to be pounding the sadness of the South Central situation on to near excess. So maybe we don’t need to see the guy shoot the girl, because it is in some way implied – as an extension of Deckard as dehumanized robot – but I see too many pros over cons to the scene.

Running with this thematic thing, the hypothetical shooting of Rachel serves only the plot, a payoff to the various discussions of “No [I wouldn’t come after you]. But somebody would,” but an actual displayed shooting of Rachel would have a grave tragedy to it because of the visceral nature of the act itself – its power lies in its existence, which sounds stupid, so in other words we need to see it in order for it to work. This is film, after all.

Rachel walks out into a clearing and Deckard is there behind her (I believe while snow is falling) mulling it over with that stoic and shadowed face, and then shoots her and walks off. He doesn’t like it, but he’s not human anymore, and this is the demonstration of that fact. That would solidify the themes whereas now what we’re sort of stuck with is endless ambiguity. Will Deckard and Rachel live a happy life together? (I guess that’s explored in the sequel novels – Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human through Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon) Is Deckard a replicant? Will Gaff ever find true love?

So basically Blade Runner‘s ending should be like what Jin-Roh has. Kill the girl, embrace the wolf.

It’s too bad she won’t live. But then again – who does?For more on Blade Runner, check out the Blade Runner Directory